Purpose, origins of San Antonio “Brass Muggers” club...

1of8Artist Julian Onderdonk of San Antonio pauses while he paints a landscape in this photo dated 1910.Photo: Courtesy /Witte Museum

2of8Photograph of Robert Jenkins Onderdonk ca. 1885. Courtesy of the Witte Museum.Photo: COURTESY OF THE WITTE MUSEUM

3of8Julian Onderdonk's "Chili Queens at the Alamo" returned to the Witte Museum in 2008 after being displayed in the Oval Office of the White House for eight years. Onderdonk, an accomplished artist in his own right, was the son of Robert Jenkins Onderdonk, an early pioneer in artistry of the Alamo.Photo: Courtesy the Witte Museum

5of8"Sunlight and Shadow," from 1910, is among the paintings on view in "Julian Onderdonk and the Texan Landscape" at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through Jan. 2.Photo: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

6of8"A Road in Late Afternoon" is one of the paintings by Julian Onderdonk in "Julian Onderdonk and the Texan Landscape," an exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art.Photo: Courtesy photo

7of8San Antonio Museum of Art director Katie Luber thinks Onderdonk, who painted “Blue Bonnets and Cactus in the Rain” in 1914, should be better known nationally.Photo: Courtesy photo

8of8“An October Afternoon” is a 1906 painting by Julian Onderdonk depicting a pastoral setting.Photo: Photos courtesy James Baker

A photograph of the Brass Muggers and identifications were provided to me by (San Antonio gallery owner) Harry Halff. The newspaper article is from the papers of my great-grandfather, Tom Brown, fifth from left in the back of the photograph. I’m thinking whoever wrote this article did so after one of the meetings where the “mugs” were lifted a time or two. My great-grandfather came here originally from Providence, R.I., through Fort Worth, and then moved with his wife, Rosa Maddox, to San Antonio around 1896. Rosa died during childbirth in 1906, and Tom had a stroke at the railway station and died in 1916. Tom was a jeweler by trade but was gaining renown as an artist, hence his association with these other great artists. I’d love to find out more about this club if possible.

— Sharon Krietzburg

The Brass Muggers was a group of artists whose purpose and origins are somewhat unclear.

The photo and identifications you sent were printed in the San Antonio Express, Dec. 27, 1936, with a Texas Centennial historical story by Fred Mosebach about San Antonio artists, inspired by the “romantic beauty” of the city’s river and its bridges, our “rustic landmarks,” tree-lined streets and even our “modern skyscrapers, towering to dizzy heights.”

Mosebach notes that many of the artists identified with the city came from somewhere else: “It takes a newcomer to appreciate this beauty and wonder why the natives do not brag about it.” Among the early-20th-century painters he recalls are “Julian Onderdonk, (who) turned out one masterpiece after another, depicting scenes of San Antonio,” and Tom Brown, who “executed many fine oil paintings.”

In a caption of the photo of a group of men, Mosebach wrote that, “A recent visit to the studio of Ernst Raba brought forth a very interesting photograph of a group of artists who were gathered as guests of the late Julian Onderdonk at his home in East French Place in 1914.” They are identified as “standing, Mr. Amick, Julian Onderdonk, Ernst Raba, Theodore Fletcher, Tom Brown, Jon Braun, Leo Cotton; seated, Ernest Thomas, R.J. Onderdonk, José Arpa, Charles Simmang, Alois Braun.” Amick may be a reference to Western artist Robert W. Amick. Robert Jenkins “R.J.” Onderdonk was the father of Julian Onderdonk.

No mention is made of the Brass Muggers, nor does it attribute the photo to Raba (whose story was told in a more recent San Antonio Express-News historical series, Nov. 30, 2017). He was a photographer as well as a photo collector.

Some of the artists pictured — Brown, Cotton, Raba and R.J. Onderdonk — were among a salon of local artists announced by the San Antonio Light, July 19, 1910, in connection with an exhibit of their work that was displayed for 11 days in Raba’s studio at 203 Alamo Plaza. It was “the purpose of the promoters of the exhibition to make the new San Antonio salon a regular institution, as this is becoming more and more an art center.” Arpa and Julian Onderdonk, the two most widely known artists in the city at that time, were included as “honorary members” of the salon, which was not identified by name.

Julian Onderdonk was to achieve success in New York with his impressionist views of the Hill Country and other scenes from his native Texas. Onderdonk, a member of a locally famous painting family, died unexpectedly at 40 of complications from an emergency operation. “Considered the leading Texas artist,” according to his obituary in the Express, Oct. 28, 1922, Onderdonk was a member of the “exclusive Salmagundi Club, an organization of artists in New York,” as well as the Allied Artists Association and the San Antonio Art League. He had had works exhibited by the National Art Academy “although he was not a member of the academy” and had achieved “recognition in the highest artistic circles of America.” If he was a Brass Mugger, assuming the club still existed, his family didn’t see fit to provide the Express with that information.

Likewise, the group is not mentioned in the Oct. 17, 1952, obituary of internationally renowned artist Arpa (discussed here Aug. 20, 2016), who had by then returned to his native Spain.

From the late 19th century on, a number of art groups were founded here, according to a story in the Light, Feb. 10, 1957. Some had high-minded purposes, such as the Van Dyck Art Club, founded in 1886 “to found a permanent art school in the city,” from which a breakaway group became the San Antonio Art Guild to support working artists in furthering their careers. Groups also formed around individuals such as Arpa and sculptor Pompeo Coppini (developing into the Coppini Academy of Fine Arts) or Gutzon Borglum’s Mill Race Studio.

Other organizations, such as the River Art Group and the Texas Water Color Society, emphasized regular shows; Men of Art, founded in 1952, had its own permanent gallery. The aim of the Artists Workshop, which met in Brackenridge Park, was “simply to get together every Wednesday and paint.”

The Brass Muggers, judging from the undated, unattributed article you shared, might have been just for fun. The tongue-in-cheek story says the “Brass Mug of Texas” was founded 30 years earlier by “some few living artists, musicians, literary mishaps, fiddlers (and) tambourinists” and “dwindled as the city’s art went on the hum” (presumably as more serious art organizations were formed in the early 20th century).

The meeting described in this clipping was a revival at which “the old club was reorganized much after the early rules of the game” by the “original Brass Muggers and a few invited guests.” About 15 men and women there “qualified for charter belongship”; the stated aim was to hold fortnightly meetings “where artists will plan art … and some San Antonio artists will paint a picture and tell truthfully about the geographical location.”

The meeting was held in the home of Julian Onderdonk, who wouldn’t have been old enough to join a professional association 30 years earlier, although his father might have been a charter member before the turn of the previous century. We don’t know from the story what the latter-day Muggers did, nor who besides at least one Onderdonk attended, because “the guest list was written on a souvenir napkin, which the hostess kept for the files of the histrionical — Oh! What’s the use?”

That’s the end of the printed story; it just breaks off right there.

Your photo, as published in the 1936 Express, might have been taken on this occasion but couldn’t have recorded an early Muggers meeting since some of the artists pictured would have been too young circa 1890 (assuming the “30 years” of the unattributed story is true) or didn’t live in San Antonio at that time.

Anyone with more information about the Brass Muggers may contact this column. Replies will be forwarded and may be featured in a future column.